Sitting at anchor in Mexico, now – with several thousand sea miles behind me – it is somewhat amusing to consider what Dale Geiger, Chris Miller and I did in the summer of 2012. Dale had never sailed before he met me, just after I got the boat. And, although Dale and I and other friends had sailed Aventura thru most of Puget Sound, The San Juan’s, and The Gulf Islands – we had never wetted her keel in the Ocean.

But, there we were sailing out of the Straits of Juan de Fuca to make “The Big Left Turn” into the blue waters of the Pacific. Thank God we had Chris. Chris Miller was just a few sea miles shy of getting his US Coast Guard’s Master 100 Ton Certificate and signed on for the trip without ever meeting Dale or I – or seeing the boat.

Really. I’d been given Chris name and number and rang him up out of the blue.
“Hey, Chris. This is Greg and a friend and I are sailing my boat from Seattle to San Diego. Would you be interested in talking about joining us?”
“When are you going,” he asked.
“We’re leaving around August 1st,” I replied.
“Sure, I’ll do it”, said Chris.   
Stunned silence followed by awkwardness and then stammering…”But, we haven’t met – you haven’t seen the boat…You don’t know if I’m an asshole and I don’t know if you’re a crack-head serial killer,” yeah, that was the jist of it.
So, to appease me – Chris came up to Seattle where he liked the boat and we immediately began a friendship that has continued beyond San Diego and into the present.
It was an amazing voyage. It was long. And, given the ever-present marine layer between The Straits and Santa Barbara – it was cold and wet. Foulies were stretched over most of the clothes we owned except for time in the bunks.

My daughter Maggie (the speed demon motor-head) had sealed her fate as a non-sailor a year before. On that day, Mags was at the wheel while her brother Nate and I were adjusting sails. It was a perfect blue-bird day in Seattle with twelve knots 0f wind on a beam-reach and boat the slightly heeled making 5 Kts. SOG. I’d waited for this moment – since Maggie had never been keen on the entire concept of sailing. So, at that perfect moment of family/nature/sailing unity I asked, “So, whaddaya think of sailing, Mags?” She didn’t bat an eye, “How can you have fun at 5 miles an hour, Dad?”
Well, I can and do have fun sailing at five miles an hour – and frequently less. But during the late Summer and early fall of 2012, Aventura’s slow slog thru the fog would have been drudgery except for the camaraderie and joy the three of us shared taking her down the entire West Coast of North America. Many people have done the same trip before and since; it’s one of the peak achievements of my life.

In part, that pride is due to some of the hardships and obstacles we overcame. We had a coolant loss forty miles offshore and 50 miles upwind of Coos Bay in strong winds and big seas at night and – without an engine – we had one shot to sail her across the bar the next morning. Chris got us there. We had problems with the windlass, the auto-pilot, the macerator, and the charger/inverter. Chris fixed them. We had to duck out of a severe weather system in Humbolt Bay – just above the most treacherous water of the trip: Cape Mendocino.

The guy at the National Weather Service that issues the NOAA reports finally gave a luke-warm thumbs up to leaving the bay and making a run for it. “Brian” said it would be tough. It was. 30 kt winds and 18’ seas (luckily both coming from the aft quarter) for 14 hours. Chris showed me how to hand-steer the aft quarter into the seas to avoid a “poop” from the stern or a broach from the beam. I’ve never been in big seas since that I haven’t said a silent “Thanks, Chris” for the lesson. Point Conception was almost as bad.

But then, magically – we turned a corner and there in front of us was warm, blue skies …. and…..and PALM TREES. We had sailed from the forests of Doug Fir to the Palm Trees of Santa Barbara. Suddenly life was very, very good and the trip was a success.

Chris oversaw the re-engineering of our auto-pilot’s set-screw assembly that had given out around Mendocino and helped raise the waterline in San Diego.

One of the few regrets of our trip – for all of us – was that Chris couldn’t manage the time to enjoy the fruits of our voyage to San Diego; the next leg of the voyage: to Cabo San Lucas via the Baja HaHa.

###